


Perfect, Just The Way You Are

by piades



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Imprinting, Jedi being uncharacteristically pro-attachment, Love at First Sight, One-Sided Attraction, Padawan Anakin Skywalker, Worldbuilding, ace jedi, anxiety about sexuality, non-graphic underage masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 00:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13493157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piades/pseuds/piades
Summary: When he sees Padme that first time he's a slave and she's a handmaiden and her cheeks are lit afire by the orange scarf she wears and he knows. This is that feeling the adults speak of. This is attraction. And love -- it had better be love too, because she is the most amazing creature in the universe, and if he can't love that then what hope is there for him?But Jedi don't love.





	Perfect, Just The Way You Are

When he sees Padme that first time he's a slave and she's a handmaiden and her cheeks are lit afire by the orange scarf she wears and he knows. This is that feeling the adults speak of. This is _attraction_. And love -- it had better be love too, because she is the most amazing creature in the universe, and if he can't love that then what hope is there for him?

"She's beautiful isn't she?" his mother asks him.

Anakin nods. He can't find the words to answer.

When she isn't in his sight his mind brings her to him, it rings the bells of her laughter, it draws the curve of her smile, parts her lips with joy, and gleams with her teeth. Some crazy part of his brain wouldn't mind staying a slave if he could work for her and bask in her radiant glory every day.

It turns out she's the Queen of Naboo and she has places to be, things to do. The Jedi take him in and then he has things to do too.

Padme is gone, but his mind won't let her leave.

*

As the years wore on, curiosity grew in him. He watched her public broadcasts and wondered how she'd react if he stroked her behind her ear, down her chest and between her breasts. Perhaps she would sigh, deep and meaningful, catching oddly on lust. Her chest would shake with it and her nipples would tremble and wrinkle.

Her dark eyes would rove over his body, curious. Where would she touch? How would he react?

He touched his penis with one hand and pressed the other against his lips imagining they belonged to her. Her tongue pressed into his mouth, then pulled back out and he followed her. He gasped, and the air was cool where he should feel her warm breath.

He laid his hands beside him on the bed. He was hot and cold all at once. That had been…

Abruptly embarrassed, he rolled onto his stomach and buried his head in his pillow. He wanted her so badly. He wanted to be _wanted by her_ so badly--

Obi-Wan fetched him for meditation a few minutes later. His body was all fuzz and hypersensitivity at once. His overactive imagination catalogued the differences between Obi-Wan's eyes and hers. In comparison, his master was dull, bumbling, and washed out.

He tried to meditate and centre himself in the Force. As he drifted and felt the Force drift through him a new, familiar awareness grew, and soon he was not meditating on the Force in general but Padme's presence within it. She was smiling at someone.

She should always smile.

Then he could no longer feel the Force. His thoughts no longer passed through his mind like clouds, but they don’t roam either. He just thought -- _Padme_.

Sensing his distraction, Obi-Wan ended their meditation.

His meditations continued like that. He couldn't find an empty, calm centre to view the Force from, because Padme was there. When he was there he felt calm. He could feel love flowing through him. He loved her so much. He loved how she fought, how she talked, how she enjoyed the act of fixing her own hair now that she could do on her own.

Being a senator suited her, and that became something something he loved too.

He felt her love, not for him but for her planet and her family, and he wanted it too. He wanted her to look at him like that, to love his spirit and admire his body like she admires her gardens.

Sometimes, when he meditated, he felt her lust.

It was never towards him.

He took heart from the fact that it roved -- but that was confusing. He had never had any interest in any being other than her. On Tatooine people took many partners, sometimes simultaneously. He'd seen their lust. The other boys had spoken of kissing with fascination, and they seemed to collect objects of infatuation like trinkets.

Here in the temple, no-one spoke of kissing. They covered reproduction in class. The language used to describe it was stale and inadequate. On Tatooine, he'd walked in on countless sex acts. Here, he's never seen anyone kiss. No-one dared eachother to make out.

No-one cared.

Neither did he care to kiss any of his age-mates. None of them were attractive. None of the _Jedi_ were attractive.

He stood before an advertisement for some kind of perfume and watched the crowd. Eyes darted to the scantily-clad women on the billboard behind him. This was a spot he'd noticed only after watching people's gazes. He watched the dilation of their eyes.

_This arouses them. They like this two-dimensional fake._

It didn’t make sense, so he reached into the force. He felt attraction there, pulling at their attention. He didn’t understand.

He was sixteen now, and he'd never seen another person he was attracted to. He hadn’t heard the word sex in the context of _fun_ since he left Tatooine. The people who glanced at the advertisement think _fun_.

There was an adolescent Togruta eyeing up the advertisement. He approached him cautiously. The Togruta caught him at it, and his brows furrowed inward.

"They're. uh. Pretty. Right?" he asked.

The Togruta snorted, looking him up and down. "Yeah, don't tell my wife, but she's prettier."

"Huh?"

The Togruta smiled widely, but there was tension to his brow that made his discomfort known. "She'll get a big head. Excuse me."

He left, walking quickly away. Anakin swallowed down his own discomfort. Had he misjudged the age of the Togruta?

He'd never tried to talk about girls before, and now he was frustrated. His body was all but yelling sex at him, but it only ever yelled at him about Padme.

He watched the crowd and watched them watch each other. Their eyes slid from one person to another, catching on the ugly and the attractive. There were constant pings of _lust lust lust_ that he had never sensed before.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched, looking about to see Knight Yord, a Besalisk Jedi.

"Didn't see me? You're sleeping standing up. Why don't you get off to the temple and into bed, Padawan Skywalker?"

"I was meditating," Anakin grumbled.

Yord raised her brows. "In this place? On… _other people's_ emotions, perhaps? Interesting."

She drummed her fingers against her gullet, her eyes unfocused.

"What's interesting?"

The Besalisk's back hands were on her hips and her fore-hands on her back elbows in a display of decisiveness. "Well, I've never managed to make much of the emotions of non-Jedi," she explained and then used three hands to make an hugely expansive gesture that included the whole plaza.

"The way they look at eachother, and feel… it's strange."

"You mean…" Anakin looked about and whispered, "--sex."

"Indeed," Yord responded, "That is the word they tend to use. Non-Jedi have an obsession with it. I suppose someone has to, we Jedi don't exactly have any will to procreate on our own."

She chuckled to herself, and began leading the way back to the temple.

"Why is that?" Anakin asked. Now that he was having this conversation, he wanted it to keep going.

Yord blinked. "You know, I've never really thought about it. I suppose that well, we just… develop differently. Maybe it's the will of the Force that we don't get distracted. Or attached. People get attached to their lovers."

 _Attached_. It was a word that, well, fit Anakin's feelings for Padme to a tee -- but the word itself was so small. It didn't include the adoration, the, well, love.

He was sure he loved her.

There was something wrong with him.

"You alright?" Yord asked.

"Yeah. No. I think it's different for me."

Anakin wanted to take the words back. Why had he said that? He'd just--

Yord didn't seem surprised, though. "Really? It's different between races -- actually, usually, there's more variation in attitudes to sex within a race than between races. We Jedi are a peculiarity."

 _We Jedi_ the knight next to him had said. Anakin's stomach churned.

"Hey, no. it's alright," Yord said quickly, and caught Anakin's eyes before he could run. "If it's different for you, that's good."

"You're patronising me," Anakin snapped.

"I am not," Yord answered sternly. "In fact, I'm going to bribe you with a good meal and we can go and speak to people knowledgeable in these matters."

"You seem to know a lot."

Yord laughed. "I'm wise. I know what I don't know. You with me?"

Anakin was.

Yord's friends were _in a relationship_. There were two of them, a pair-bonded male and female. Yord explained why they were impinging on the couple's hospitality and Anakin tried not to spontaneously combust with embarrassment.

There were biscuits and couches and lots of hospitality. Anakin sat down and tried not to fidget. Yord stayed in the kitchen with Mara, the woman, while Jen sat beside Anakin on the couch.

As the fabric dipped, Anakin's hands clenched in the fabric of his trousers.

"So. It's been odd few years for you, I imagine."

Anakin snorted. "Yeah."

"It's hard enough finding your way around romance without growing up in a Jedi temple," Jen added. "Believe me, a little confusion is completely warranted."

"I just--" Anakin broke off. "I love this woman. And." He leaned back. "Other people are. They. They look at everyone! All the time! And the Jedi never look at anyone. But she. Ugh."

He threw up his hands.

"How is she?"

"She's incredible," Anakin breathed.

"How long have you loved her?" Jen asked.

"I dunno. Since I laid eyes on her? That's weird isn't it."

"Uncommon for humans," Jan answered. "What do you want to know, Anakin?"

"I want to know how to be _normal_ ," Anakin growled.

Jen let out a startled laugh, and Anakin glared ferociously.

"Sorry. But. Anakin. Don't live a lie. People are weird, and people who deny that deny themselves. You're you. And that's really, really precious. Don't squash it."

"But I don't even know what I am!"

"An adolescent learning himself," Jen answered for him. "And Mara and I can help you with that a little."

Anakin nodded. He felt tears coming to his eyes as years of frustration and fear were being unburied.

Jen asked him questions, and Anakin did his best to answer them. Jen came to the conclusion that he was a classic imprinter -- rare among humans, definitely not uncommon among species.

"So I'm… never going to--"

"Probably not, Anakin. Imprinters tend to remain attached to their imprintee their entire life. It's an honour, Anakin. She must be an incredible woman.

"She is."

That was… nice. It was nice to know that what he was and why he felt like this. And this feeling was never going to go away. He breathed out.

It was an anxiety he hadn't known he had. The idea that he would become like all those others, his attention skittering over the populace -- or like the other Jedi, who were devoid of any attraction at all.

"I want her to know," Anakin said. "And I want -- I want her to. To--"

"To love you back?"

Anakin nodded -- and then he gasped.

"No, she--she!"

He stood up.

"She's like them! Even if she actually _cared_ she wouldn't--she has to--she could--"

"Anakin!" Yord emerged from the kitchen. "Calm down. Sit. _Meditate._ Accept your anxieties and release them."

"She wouldn't care about me and even if she did she'd _leave!_ " Anakin yelled.

One of Yord's hands cupped Anakin's. "Breathe, Anakin. With me. I'm going to lift my hand up, and breathe in while we do that, okay?"

Anakin nodded vigorously, and did what he was told.

He calmed slowly.

"Now listen to me," Yord said. "That fear that she would leave you--"

Anakin's chest felt tight.

"I want you to feel that. Now close your eyes, and feel the force…

"And release."

Anakin breathed out, and felt lighter.

He drifted to that place in the force where there was only Padme. He could sense his own desperation for her to love him pushing on her, pulling on her presence in the force.

And then -- he released it.

There was nothing but the force. He opened his eyes, and stared at the Besalisk before him in astonishment.

"I… is that how it feels for other people?"

Yord laughed, a note a note of joy in it.

"I'd wager that you're feeling everything a bit more than the average Jedi. But yes."

He and Obi-Wan received a mission to protect Padme. Anakin stumbled a little as he looked upon her in the flesh again. His breath caught in his throat. This was his imprintee, he loved her, and he would do what he could to keep her safe. He would destroy everything to keep her--

He closed his eyes and found that place in the Force where there was nothing, not ever her. Where there was everything instead, every hope and living desire. He felt his fear, and he let it pass through him.

Then he opened his eyes.

"Uh. Hi," He mumbled at her odd look. He'd been standing there with his eyes shut for some time. "Jedi thing. Don't worry."

She smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> So the whole non-attachment thing meaning "don't take lovers" doesn't make a whit of sense to me on multiple different levels, so I thought: What if there's another reason for the Jedi not know how to deal with romantic or sexual love? What if growing up as a Jedi actually kills those impulses? But poor Anakin didn't grow up that way, so he only received that influence after meeting Padme, effectively stopping him from becoming attracted to anyone else, ever.
> 
> But our OC Master Yord's here to save the day, because frankly rots sucks for pretty much everyone (and not nearly enough for some.)


End file.
